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Jan 16, 2025 | 
theamericanscholar.org | David Lehman
Kudos, all! Our last “Next Line, Please” elicited 88 comments.
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Dec 16, 2024 | 
theamericanscholar.org | David Lehman
We headlined our previous poetry challenge with a line from Virginia Woolf: “I have had my vision.” And sure enough, the last sentences of To the Lighthouse provoked more poems than did our other two prompts: D. H. Lawrence’s surprising opening sentence of Lady Chatterley’s Lover and Maggie Smith’s role in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie.
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Nov 22, 2024 | 
theamericanscholar.org | David Lehman
Last month, I announced the return of my “Next Line, Please,” column, which ran on this site from 2014 to 2015. In that first reprise (read it here), I proffered up 15 quotations from books, plays, and movies, challenging readers to identify the source of the quotations. Here are the first three identified, plus a prompt to go with each. Choose one prompt and enter your effort in the comments field.
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Nov 18, 2024 | 
newyorker.com | David Lehman
If I write another novelI shall call it “The Interruption”in honor of Machado de Assisin short numbered chapterseach with a title like“God Knows What He’s Doing.”I shall write it withthe fountain pen of mirthand the ink of melancholybetween panic attacksin my hotel room plus sink on the rue des Écolesand declaim it at dinner,a mess of lentils served with the salt of mysteryand the pepper of danger.
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Oct 25, 2024 | 
theamericanscholar.org | David Lehman
From May 2014 to September 2019, I wrote our “Next Line, Please,” column, the brainchild of the Scholar’s then-editor, Robert Wilson. As Bob envisaged it, the column would be a sort of weekly competition from which we “crowdsourced” a sonnet.
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Aug 20, 2024 | 
tabletmag.com | David Lehman
It’s the turning point of The Stranger (1946),the moment Edward G. Robinsonwakes up in the middle of the nightknowing Orson Welles gave himself awayby saying “Marx wasn’t a German,he was a Jew.” Only a Naziwould make the distinction, he reasons. On the other hand, in “On the Jewish Question” (1843),Karl Marx wrote that money is the jealous godof the Jews, turning men into commodities,hucksters all, look at them haggle.
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Jun 18, 2024 | 
psychiatrictimes.com | Nicolas Badre |David Lehman
Permission to state the obvious: life has a tendency to be difficult. After all, 90% of Americans have lived through a traumatic event in their life.1 Naturally, many psychiatrists take a firm position validating individual trauma and providing a nurturing stance towards said traumatized individual. If life feels like an endless barrage of suffering, psychiatrists often define their practices as a place of safety and comfort.
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Jun 6, 2024 | 
theamericanscholar.org | David Lehman
As the weather warms and air-conditioned living rooms beckon, you might find yourself in the mood for patriotic films like Michael Curtiz’s Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942) or Preston Sturges’s Christmas in July (1940). To these, I would add The Great Escape (1963), a masterly movie directed by John Sturges (no relation to Preston), which features a memorable Independence Day scene.
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Mar 6, 2024 | 
nasdaq.com | David Lehman
By David Lehman, President and Chief Operating Officer at BirdeyeImagine you’re considering an investment opportunity in a bustling restaurant chain. At first glance, the financials paint a rosy picture but something feels off. Curiosity piqued, you dive into online reviews and what you find is eye-opening: a chorus of complaints of slow service and inconsistent food quality across several locations.
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Feb 29, 2024 | 
theamericanscholar.org | David Lehman
From left: Naunton Wayne, Peggy Bryan, and Basil Radford in Dead of Night, 1945 Dead of Night (1945), an anthology movie with segments directed by Alberto Cavalcanti, Charles Crichton, Basil Dearden and Robert Hamer, is one of the glories of British black-and-white filmmaking.
